‘Frozen’ Gets Hot Start in Frosty Japan

TOKYO, HONG KONG – Walt Disney’s “Frozen” has had the biggest opening weekend of the year to date in Japan for a foreign pic.

It earned $9.5 million on 598 screens and 602,347 admissions on the March 15-16 weekend.

That tops the opening weekend of “Monsters University, the number one B.O. foreign picture of 2013, which went on to score $88 million.

By comparison, the last Disney cartoon to open in Japan, “Brave,” bowed on a similar 563 screens, but got a much frostier reception. It earned only $1.4 million on 106,271 admissions.

Driving the popularity of “Frozen” are not only its Oscars wins, but also the smash hit renditions of “Let It Go” by local artists May J, whose version is used as the ending song, and Takako Matsu, who voices Elsa in the Japanese dub.

“Frozen” has been a huge hit in Asia – and many other places – achieving a record setting $77 million in South Korea and $48.2 million in China, where it still ranked ninth after 40 days on release.

“It earned $9.5 million on 598 screens and 602,347 admissions on the March 15-16 weekend.

That tops the opening weekend of “Monsters University, the number one B.O. foreign picture of 2013, which went on to score $88 million”.

It’s wrong! Frozen open in friday and earned 9,5M$ in 3-days weekend (March 14-15-16) and 7,4M$ in 2-days weekend (sat-sun), for an exact comparison Monsters University opened on saturday and earned 8,8M$ (not 88) in 2-day weekend.